Friday, January 4, 2013

BWRPG #1 (Star Wars Saga Edition Game Review)

A couple years ago I received an Amazon Gift Card for Christmas. This, coupled with some earnings I had from a social marketing website called Crowdtap, allowed me to purchase the Star Wars Roleplaying Game: Saga Edition. I had never really played a tabletop RPG before (other than some goofing around with GURPS, which I'll bwog on later) and thought "If only I had some friends, I could play this!" Well. You may or may not be aware of the format referred to as play-by-posting but it's a fairly big deal on the Internet for folks like myself who have no friends or, more commonly, who just prefer to take advantage of a slower pace and some of the awesome gamer aids out there (like Roll20.net, for instance). I searched around for a site that played Saga and finally landed on Galactic Campaigns. It's a small community but fun and I've had some great times as both player and GM there over the last two years. There was also a site literally called saga-edition.com, but it recently went under and I think GalCam is pretty much your best bet for Saga games. I mention all this simply because my experience with the game is almost entirely in the play-by-post format and that differs from sitting across from your buddies, eating pizza and drinking blue mountain dew.The game itself is pretty straightforward and easy to grasp, once you have a few core concepts down. It uses something loosely called the d20 System that uses a twenty-sided die, with modifiers based on circumstances, to determine success or failure in a given situation. Saga also grants characters things like Destiny Points and Force Points to help modify rolls just in case you need the extra boost. The five main classes (Jedi, Noble, Scoundrel, Scout, and Soldier) serve to give a decent array of who you'd encounter in that galaxy far, far away, and then there are prestige classes (Crime Lord, Elite Soldier, Force Disciple, and Gunslinger, to name a few) that you can get later on. This game served as a good launching point into the world of roleplaying (I'm still not counting GURPS) as those basic concepts are found in the majority of the games out there. The Saga game is now out-of-print and you have to borrow or buy used to play it, but it's totally worth the money to spend on at least the corebook if you've a hankerin' for bustin' Stormtroopers.In short - you should try this game out if you can, even if it means just asking for a pre-generated character to test it out on a forum somewhere. I'll probably return to SW:SE at some other time, but I just wanted to get it out there that the Bwogosphere isn't just about video games.Blah blah blah review. Now for the bwog you came here for.My first character ever was a droid that I wanted to be a sort of scout on the junk planet of Raxus Prime. The idea was to have him search around for parts and use them to build things like speeders and blasters and sell them to make a living. Very boring but I like that sort of thing. We can't all be Jedi (and we don't all want to anyway). My Gamemaster had me exploring a partially covered ship hull out in the middle of nowhere when it suddenly dawned on me - I had no flashlight. I was about to travel deep underground, armed with only a hunting rifle, without any light because I thought it would be cooler to purchase magnetic feet instead of nightvision. I searched for some flammable things for a makeshift torch and continued on my merry ignorant way. Guess who I met? A droideka.Yeah.These guys have problems with flashlights too, but it's mostly because they can't hold them very well... what with laser machine gun blasters for hands. I attempted to talk to him but that didn't work out so well and I woke up two weeks later on a spaceship full of droid pirates with a restraining bolt and the role of "guy-who-floats-across-to-the-other-ship-and-disables-its-antennae-while-the-rest-of-us-kill-all-the-passengers". It was totally unexpected and I loved it. I'd like to say I learned my lesson, but I have at least one other character that forgot a flashlight that I'll talk about some time. For those of you forming a psychological profile of BW based on the way he plays his characters - please be patient. My naked Argonians and can't-see-in-the-dark droids are just the tip of the bright green iceberg.With Brightest of (Nightvision) Greens,BW